Shahnam Golshani
In prison

Shahnam Golshani was arrested in February 2013 for supposedly “promoting Baha’ism” and “manipulating the coins and currency market via his website.” Since then, he has never been put on trial so it is unclear how long he will remain in prison. At the time of his arrest, he was the managing editor of the Mesghal website.

At the time of his arrest, Shahnam (Shahram) Golshani was the managing editor of Mesghal, a website that became an authority on precious metals and hard currency.

However on February 3, 2013, when the government under Ahmadinejad lost control of the currency market, the site was blocked.

Then, two days later, it came out that the Iranian Central Bank’s security department had asked Golshani to publish lower rates for hard currency than the actual market price with the aim of calming people down. However he refused to do this and for this he was arrested.

But this backfired as it had the unintended consequence of making the market even more volatile because the business community saw his arrest as a threat to businessmen who were unwilling to obey the government and the Central Bank’s diktats.

Then, the following day, Mashregh website, which is affiliated to the Ministry of Intelligence, reported that “Shahram G.” the managing editor of “a site belonging to the Baha’is, which played an effective role in inflating the prices of coins and currency,” had been arrested.

The site added that Shahram G. “succeeded in quickly turning the site into an authority on gold and currency prices by colluding with a number of greedy money changers. In the current crisis, the manager of the site was able to create volatility in the market in collusion with the dealers and pocket huge amounts of profit.”

Hossein Shariatmadari, the editor-in-chief of the hardliner newspaper Kayhan, wrote that the Baha’is, Zionist agents and other groups that were responsible for market volatility “have bought hundreds of tons of gold and aim to play against the leaders of the government, the Revolutionary Guards and sacred institutions.”

On July 22, 2013 the Judiciary Spokesman Mohseni Ejei affirmed the charges against Mashregh and Mesghal but did not give a date for his trial or any other information.